It is desirable to produce a decorative baseball for promotional and aesthetic purposes in which the baseball retains its well-known seams and lacing that join a covering. This covering is formed, typically, from a pair of leather or cowhide sections, each having a "dog bone" shape. The sections are overlaid on a wound center core. Prior attempts to produce patterns on baseballs that extend over the seams have involved the use of a stamping process in which the finished baseball receives an applied pattern formed from paint or ink. Prior art decoration of baseballs consists primarily of stamps of this paint or ink directly on the surface after the baseball was complete. A disadvantage of this stamping technique is that it is not possible to cover a large portion of the baseball's spherical surface.
Globes are the most commonly recognized "decorative" spheres having complex printing overlaid on substantially their entire surface. Globes are typically formed by preprinting a plurality of wedges using a carefully scaled pattern, and then applying the wedges to a spherical core. This particular technique is not readily applicable to a baseball, however, since the baseball is formed not from wedges, but from a pair of cowhide or leather sections shaped, generally, in the form of dog bones. Printing a pattern that passes over the dog bone seam is much more problematic.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a decorative baseball, and method for forming such a baseball, that allows a pattern to be applied accurately over seams upon substantially the entire surface of the ball. A method for forming decorative balls according to this invention should be rotally repeatable and suitable for mass-production techniques.